The apple….
last update: 07/31 @ 18:27
…doesn’t fall far from the tree; so they say. I have to agree. Robert fell asleep last night in mid-page turn of his Things that Go book. (Photo in a dark room courtesy of Sony’s NightShot Plus.)

(1) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

Restore mostly complete
last update: 07/29 @ 09:19

There are still a couple minor bits of software to get working, but the server live again, better, stronger, faster (or at least with more disk space.

Now to work on a new backup scheme and maybe improve my restore plan….

(2) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

First trip to Micro Center
last update: 07/28 @ 23:39
Due to a failure in our internal server’s disk drive system, Robert and I took a trip out to Micro Center. Robert’s intoduction to geekdom in retail went quite well. He seemed to enjoy rolling around looking at all the cool stuff; the internal cables seems to be his favorite, but the motherboards were also interesting to him.

The jury is still out the disk system failure; we procured spares and replacements in the hope of preventing such a catastrophic failure in the future. The mirrored raid array which I expected to protect me from such problems never noticed the problems that resulted in a lack of usable data on either of the hard drives. Charitably, the raid controller uses it’s own format for the disk and that’s why I was unable to find anything useful on either drive — less charitably….

So I’m dropping raid 1 mirroring and this time I’ll manually rsync the main disk’s data to a backup disk nightly (in addition to the afternoonly backup of the data of interest and the monthly backup of the full file system to an external drive stored off site. (While I’m in the process of re-installing an OS (not from Redmond), I remain hopeful that the backup data is here without the need to resort to the external drive.)

Oh, and did I mention that I was all set for the restore (new toys on hand, Robert happily asleep) when we lost power (along with 45,398 of our closest Northern Virginia friends) last night? Hence the web site outage — the UPS is good for minutes, not hours. And the internal server outage is the reason behind any email bounces about no route to host. There was no functional host to route to.

Back to the OS install…..

(2) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

Birthday!!!
last update: 07/23 @ 17:01
Robert celebrates his birthday with a Krispy Kreme; what could be better? Actually, he also had a cupcake at his friend Taylor’s birthday party — it’s just the birthday season.

There are way too many photos (including a few more walking shots from earlier in the week) on his First Birthday page.

(0) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

Promise Fulfilled
last update: 07/20 @ 10:13
After all his practice in Tuscany with his extended family (see the Italy trip photos), Robert is now walking on his on. Still a little wobbly, still falling down now and again. But he’s very happy to be more mobile — though walking takes some concentration, the smile lights up when he arrives.

(2) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

The Tuscany Notes are here!
last update: 07/12 @ 21:36
This statue on the cathedral in Lucca is one of the many photos in the hot off the presses Tuscay 2005 section.

(0) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

The great sunflower contest
last update: 07/12 @ 00:38
This sparked Sarah to suggest a contest for best sunflower photo. That will have to wait for Elle’s entry to arrive.

The photo editing is pretty much done; we’re down to about 180 photos to post (soon). Of course, this will be one.

(0) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

Our home away from home
last update: 07/10 @ 18:34
We’re selecting photos to post now (while Robert naps to recover from the trip). In the meantime, here’s where we stayed: Corte Medicino just outside of Altopascio on the road to Orentano. We were in the rose colored house peaking out behind the plants.

(1) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

Travelling Trooper
last update: 07/08 @ 21:33
Robert and Sarah on the Florence to Munich leg of our return from Tuscany. We had a great time seeing the sights and hanging out with the family. Watch this space for more photos…

(0) Comments -- permanent link
Edit this (owner only)

Add new entry (owner only)